WXYZ previews a coming attraction: Meteor impact on Moon

One of the stories that I will be using in this week's space and astronomy news will be the largest lunar impact ever recorded by NASA.  WXYZ covered that news and their video Meteor crashes into moon's surface serves as a good preview of the NASA video I will include later this week.


Take comfort in the rock hitting the Moon instead of Earth and also that the Earth's atmosphere would have protected us from the full force of impact, although it would have made for a spectacular fireball.

Pandemics and collapse

Although the author of Peak Civilization, the article at The Oil Drum about the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, might disagree, it looks like disease might have contributed to the end of the expansion of the Eastern Roman Empire under Justinian.  Charles Choi of LiveScience explains in Plague Helped Bring Down Roman Empire, Graveyard Suggests.

Plague may have helped finish off the Roman Empire, researchers now reveal.
...
The bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, has been linked with at least two of the most devastating pandemics in recorded history. One, the Great Plague, which lasted from the 14th to 17th centuries, included the infamous epidemic known as the Black Death, which may have killed nearly two-thirds of Europe in the mid-1300s. Another, the Modern Plague, struck around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, beginning in China in the mid-1800s and spreading to Africa, the Americas, Australia, Europe and other parts of Asia.

Although past studies confirmed this germ was linked with both of these catastrophes, much controversy existed as to whether it also caused the Justinianic Plague of the sixth to eighth centuries. This pandemic, named after the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, killed more than 100 million people. Some historians have suggested it contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire.

To help solve this mystery, scientists investigated ancient DNA from the teeth of 19 different sixth-century skeletons from a medieval graveyard in Bavaria, Germany, of people who apparently succumbed to the Justinianic Plague.

They unambiguously found the plague bacterium Y. pestis there.

The same source who sent me the above article also sent me the next, which I placed together in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Carbon Dioxide 400 ppm) on Daily Kos as a reminder that, to paraphrase Samuel Clemens, history may not repeat, but it certainly does rhyme and also that resource depletion and environmental degradation aren't the only threats to civilization.

Discover Magazine: Pandemic Chatter
By Keith Kloor
May 10, 2013 12:22 pm

I’m not on the pandemic beat, but some of the best science journalists are, and they are busy these days. Today, David Quammen, author of the recently published and critically acclaimed book, Spillover: Animal infections and the next human pandemic, has an op-ed in the New York Times. It begins:

Terrible new forms of infectious disease make headlines, but not at the start. Every pandemic begins small. Early indicators can be subtle and ambiguous. When the Next Big One arrives, spreading across oceans and continents like the sweep of nightfall, causing illness and fear, killing thousands or maybe millions of people, it will be signaled first by quiet, puzzling reports from faraway places — reports to which disease scientists and public health officials, but few of the rest of us, pay close attention. Such reports have been coming in recent months from two countries, China and Saudi Arabia.

The worrisome Chinese bird flu strain that has gotten a lot of attention is not, in its present form, going to cause a pandemic, says Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers of Disease Control (CDC). But if you want to learn about the potential for its lethal mutation, and why you should be worried about it, read this piece in Foreign Policy by veteran science journalist Laurie Garrett.

Follow over the jump for the latest on the other pandemic threat coming out of Saudi Arabia.

Time Magazine on peak oil and climate change

For the most recent Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday on Daily Kos, I decided to look at Time Magazine, which I've used in past years' lectures on science and the scientific method as a good example of how science is misrepresented in the mainstream media.  Media outlets change with the times, some for the worse and some for the better.  Reuters, for example, has become a lot less user friendly for readers looking for environmental coverage.  It's still there, but it's much harder to locate.  I was hoping that Time's science coverage had improved since I last looked at it a few years ago.  To my surprise, it had, featuring three articles by Bryan Walsh about the causes and effects of climate change.

The first, The IEA Says Peak Oil Is Dead. That’s Bad News for Climate Policy, explains how the development of unconventional oil will, as I wrote in Carbon Dioxide at Miocene levels, allow us to 'burn it until we reach Jurassic levels of carbon dioxide and global warm temperatures.'

No one—aside maybe from survivalists who’d stocked up on MREs and assault rifles—was really looking forward to a peak-oil world. Read this 2007 GQ piece by Benjamin Kunkel—while we’re discussing topics from the mid-2000s—that imagines what a world without oil would really be like. Think uncomfortable and violent. Oil is in nearly every modern product we use, and it’s still what gets us from point A to point B—especially if you need to get from A to B in a plane. If we were really to see the global oil supply peak and decline sharply, even as demand continued to go up, well, apocalyptic might not be too large a word. And for several years in the middle of the last decade, as oil prices climbed past $100 a barrel and analysts were betting it would break $200, that scenario seemed entirely plausible.

But there was an upside to peak oil. Crude oil was responsible for a significant chunk of global carbon emissions, second only to coal. Only the shock of being severed from the main fuel of modernity would be enough to make us get serious about tackling climate change and shifting to an economy powered by renewable energy and efficiency. We’d have to because we’d have no other choice, save a future that might look something like Mad Max. We’d lose oil but save the world.

Increasingly, though, that doesn’t seem likely to happen.

Here's the graphic from the IEA.


It shows that peak conventional oil happened right on schedule in 2006 and even the optimists at the IEA don't think conventional oil production will ever return to its highs of the last decade.  The doomers were right about that one.  What they didn't foresee was that technology would finally catch up with demand to deliver new sources of fossil fuel to the market.  That took nearly a decade to happen and the delay resulted in all of the energy supply reasons for the wrenching economic contraction of the past five years.  Now that a combination of reduced demand and increased unconventional oil has managed to loosen what New Deal Democrat at The Bonddad Blog calls the oil choke collar.  That would be good for the current economy and allow more time to develop non-fossil fuel sources of energy, but terrible for the climate and the rest of the planet's natural environment in the medium and long range.

Follow over the jump for what Bryan Walsh of Time Magazine thinks climate change will do to biodiversity, including some wild animals we depend on for food.

Refinery issues change battlefield in gas price war

Friday, the corner station raised its regular price to $3.85.  At the time, I thought that they were once again charging into No Man's Land and that they would retreat back into the $3.68 trench, just as they did last time.  I realized differently yesterday, when I saw that the three stations down the street were all at $3.84.  The best that would happen would be that the corner station would match their prices, which it did today.

So, what's happening?  It's not the flooding, as that was a month ago.  It is oil prices?  According to Stuart Saniford at Early Warning, it shouldn't be.

Brent has dropped to the low end of the range of $100-$120 that it's traded in for the last couple of years.  At this level it strikes me as cheap...

Here's the graphical update Stuart provided.


That's the big picture, but what does the situation look like now?  Time to ask Reuters, which reported Oil rallies for third day, shrugging off firm dollar.

Oil rose for a third straight session on Friday, supported by a raft of strong economic data from top oil consumer the United States that also boosted U.S. equities, even as the dollar hit a multi-year high.
...
Brent crude settled up 86 cents at $104.64 a barrel, after an earlier rise of more than $1.

U.S. oil rose 86 cents to settle at $96.02, its third straight rise. U.S. crude has swung between $97 a barrel on May 6 and $92 a barrel on May 15.

According to the calculator at Econobrowser, gasoline should be at $3.45 when Brent is at $104.64.  So it's not the oil.

It turns out that it's the refineries again, as USA Today reprinted in the Detroit Free Press reported Friday: Refinery woes cause nationwide gas price spike.

Troubles at several oil refineries are driving gasoline prices sharply higher in the Midwest, and the regional shortages are expected to boost pump prices nationwide.

While the USA may be dripping in new found crude oil deposits and early May supplies were at their highest levels since the early 1930s, issues at a handful of refineries that turn crude into gasoline and diesel fuel underscore how kinks in the supply chain can cause quick surges in what consumers pay at the pump.

Gas prices in Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma and Wisconsin have spiked up to 27 cents a gallon the past week alone. Behind the rise: outages and extended maintenance has curbed output at refineries in Joliet, Ill., Whiting, Ind; Tulsa, Okla, and Eldorado, Kansas.

I don't expect this to go away soon and neither does USA Today...

Nationally, prices average $3.60 a gallon after beginning 2013 at $3.29. Some industry observers thought this year's prices had peaked at $3.78 in February after sliding to $3.50 April 29. But the Midwest's refinery issues are now expected to keep propel prices for several weeks, perhaps to $3.85 a gallon nationwide.

...Or Stuart Saniford, after noting that Brent is cheap.

Saudi Arabia isn't going to let it go much lower (at least not for any length of time), and any number of things in the world could go wrong to make it go higher.  In particular, I continue to have more faith in the future appetite of Chinese and Middle Eastern motorists to consume oil than US frackers to find it.

The commodities traders think that gas prices will go up, too, as Reuters mentioned.

U.S. gasoline has risen for nine out of 12 sessions, including the last three, despite a Wednesday report showing an unexpected year-on-year build in gasoline inventories ahead of the summer driving season.

On top of both the refining situation and oil price fundamentals, summer driving season has begun.  I expect gas to briefly hit $4.00 right around July 4th.  Good thing I'll finally get that bike I've been thinking about.

Climate science choking on the latest serving of Satan Sandwich

In More science and the Satan Sandwich, SciShow on sequestration's effects on science, and Space and astronomy news: Satan Sandwich edition #1, I described the effects of sequestration on science research in general and NASA in particular, as well as efforts to reverse them.  Now, it's time to show how the latest serving of Satan Sandwich is hurting climate research, which might be more of a feature than a bug.

Inside Climate News: Sequester Hits Nation's Climate Change Research Capability
Eight regional centers dedicated to expanding climate research at the local level lose millions in budget cuts.
By Rachel Nuwer, InsideClimate News   
May 1, 2013

When Renee McPherson took on the role of director of research at the South Central Climate Science Center last year, she had no idea that she’d soon be grappling with budget cuts that threatened her ability to support regional climate research or hire new graduate students and faculty—the premise of hosting the center in the first place.

The facility McPherson runs out of the University of Oklahoma is among eight centers created between 2010 and 2012 by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The goal was to bring together federal, academic and on-the-ground experts who could pursue climate change research at the local level.

But then came the sequester, the Congressional mandate that slashed federal budgets across the board.

The irony, at least if one assumes that denialists might think this is a good idea, is that the weather itself is convincing people of the severity of the situation.

Postmedia News via Canada.com: Extreme weather is making Americans climate-change believers, study finds
By William Marsden, Postmedia News
May 3, 2013

A year of strange and often devastating weather that included extreme hurricanes, drought and wildfires appears to have increased the number of Americans who want government action on climate change, a new study shows.

Unfortunately, researchers say, this higher level of global-warming awareness is not translating into political action.

“Mother Nature has been pretty busy teaching Americans and Canadians and people from round the world about climate change through extreme weather over the past couple of years,” said Prof. Ed Maibach, one of the authors of the survey. “Since 2011 we see a fairly strong increase in belief that climate change is real and human caused and people are worried about it.”

The survey shows that 58 per cent of Americans believe “global warming is affecting weather in the United States” and 85 per cent of Americans claimed they experienced extreme weather during the last year.

Also, scientific research on climate change is making headlines again.

Reuters: Carbon dioxide level crosses milestone at Hawaii site
By Environment Correspondent Deborah Zabarenko
WASHINGTON | Sat May 11, 2013 5:32am EDT

The amount of climate-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere topped 400 parts per million at a key observing station in Hawaii for the first time since measurement began in 1958, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Friday.

To many scientists, crossing the 400 ppm threshold, which means that there are 400 molecules of carbon dioxide for every million molecules in the air, is a bit like the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising above 15,000 points.

"It's important mainly as a milestone that marks a steady progress of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," said James Butler of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory.

Being able to figure out what happens when carbon dioxide is at Miocene levels might be a good idea and worthy of funding.

Robots are coming for our jobs

The idea of robots taking our jobs, which bloggers like Chad/escapefromwisconsin at The Hipcrime Vocab and Stuart Saniford at Early Warning have been writing about for years, has popped its head up in mainstream science reporting.  While Chad and Stuart have been pessimistic about the prospects, Discovery News on YouTube takes a more optimistic view in Robots Are Stealing Your Job.

Robots are awesome, but beware: they're after your jobs! Trace looks at the work robots are doing today, that once required a human touch.

I don't think either Chad or Stuart would be so comfortable with the situation.  Instead, they might agree more with Seth Fletcher of Scientific American.

Yes, Robots Are Coming for Our Jobs—Now What?
M.I.T. economist Erik Brynjolfsson explains how technology has affected economic growth and productivity, and how human workers can adapt

Fifteen years ago Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in a game of chess, marking the beginning of what Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Erik Brynjolfsson calls the new machine age—an era driven by exponential growth in computing power. Lately, though, people have been feeling uneasy about the machine age. Pundits and experts seem to agree that the robots are definitely taking our jobs. At last week’s TED conference, Brynjolfsson argued that the new machine age is great for economic growth, but we still have to find a way to coexist with the machines. We asked him to expand on a few points.
...
Throughout most of modern history, productivity and employment have grown side by side. But starting about 15 years ago they started becoming decoupled. Productivity continued to grow, even accelerate, but employment stagnated and even fell, as did median wages for the people who were still working. This was an important milestone, because most economists, including me, used to be of the mind-set that if you just keep increasing productivity, everything else kind of takes care of itself.

But there’s no economic law that says everyone has to benefit equally from increased productivity. It’s entirely possible that some people benefit a lot more than others or that some people are made worse off. And as it turns out, for the past 10 to 15 years it’s gone that way. The pie has gotten bigger but most of the increase in income has gone to less than 1 percent of the population. Those at the 50th percentile or lower have actually done worse in absolute terms.

Chad at The Hipcrime Vocab came to the same conclusion beginning very early in his examination of robots and automation, beginning with What Are People Good For?  As for Stuart, he thinks the loss of jobs to robots will be the major effect of the Singularity, not everyone becoming cyborgs or the machines enslaving or killing off humanity.  Just the same, this is yet another piece of evidence demonstrating that we live in science fiction times.

Annular Solar Eclipse and other space and astronomy news

NTDTV on YouTube has this week's top story in Annular Solar Eclipse Seen from Australia's Outback.

Scientists and astronomers from around the world gathered at Tennant Creek In Australia's outback to view an annular Solar eclipse on Friday, beginning just before 7 a.m.
...
The next total solar eclipse will be visible from Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Americas in November 2013.

Follow over the jump for the rest of this past week's space and science news.

Rescuing the Star Trek past, continued

In Rescuing the Star Trek past, I quoted Original 'Star Trek' Galileo Shuttlecraft Restored by Loving Fans and embedded the accompanying video.  Space.com on YouTube has followed up on this story with Star Trek Galileo Shuttlecraft To Land At Space Center Houston.

Star Trek's original prop shuttlecraft will be heading to the Johnson Space Center's visitors attraction, once its restoration team is done. SPACE.com found project leader Adam Schneider and crew in the ship's Atlantic Highlands, NJ "space-dock."

I'm sure that their efforts bring them satisfaction, and will bring comfort to the fans who will be happy to see the history of their favorite franchise preserved.

Speaking of the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek Into Darkness opened yesterday.  I'll have more about that in a future installment, when I revisit my opinion that the franchise is in good hands.

Jello shots for Narb

Narb had the following to say in a comment to ABC News and Democracy Now on comfort food.

Narb loves Michael Pollan (in a detached, intellectual way).

He also loves jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello.

In the spirit of This one's for Narb and Narb asked for more posts about Jell-O,* here are some videos about Jello shots.

First, Simple Cooking Channel explains how to make Marshmallow Jello shots.

Welcome to the SimpleCookingChannel. Things might get pretty simple sometimes but sometimes that's just what a person needs. I hope you like my recipe for marshmallow jello shots.
...
Ingredients

Marshmallow's
85 Grams of jello
Half a cup of vodka

Next, BuzzFeedFood describes their Blood Orange Mimosa Jello Shots recipe.

Blood Orange Mimosa Jello Shots

These are inspired by Jaymee Sire, the brilliant blogger behind e is for eat. See her post. We used tangerines because they are easier to find than real blood oranges, and made the prettiest cups. But you could also use navel oranges or actual blood oranges with great results. The cups will just be slightly more difficult to clean out. Adjust food coloring amount accordingly.

Finally, the Tipsy Bartender shows how to make Guinness Jello Shots.

Possibly the most badass jello shots we've made...GUINNESS JELLO SHOTS! An awesome beer taste with a hint of chocolate, covered with a tasty Bailey's foam head!

RECIPE
======
Guinness
Baileys

The Tipsy Bartender has an entire playlist of jello shots, so if Narb wants more Jello, I can just pull one or more of them out.  That's a comforting thought.

*As you can see, I post one of these a year. This is the one for 2013--so far.

Gas mileage down but so are emissions, plus bonus gas price rollercoaster

Early this month, the University of Michigan reported Fuel economy in the U.S. drops from recent high.   Here's the complete press release.

ANN ARBOR—Fuel economy of new vehicles sold in the U.S. slipped last month for the first time this year, say researchers at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.

Average fuel economy (window-sticker values) of cars, light trucks, minivans and SUVs purchased in April was 24.5 mpg, according to UMTRI researchers Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle.

"This value is down 0.1 mpg from the record high reached in March, likely reflecting the recent decrease in the price of gasoline," Sivak said. "Despite this small drop, the fuel economy is up 4.4 mpg since October 2007—the first month of our monitoring."

In addition to average fuel economy, Sivak and Schoettle issued their monthly update of their national Eco-Driving Index, which estimates the average monthly emissions generated by an individual U.S. driver. The EDI takes into account both the fuel used per distance driven and the amount of driving—the latter relying on data that are published with a two-month lag.

During February, the EDI improved to 0.82 from 0.83 the month before (the lower the value, the better). The index currently shows that emissions of greenhouse gases per driver of newly purchased vehicles are down 18 percent, overall, since October 2007.

While the average MPG of a new car is up slightly because of lower gas prices, the replacement of less fuel-efficient older vehicles with newer ones plus the fewer miles driven per person have reduced individual emissions.  That's good news, especially in the face of carbon dioxide at levels not seen since the Tertiary.

In related news, the corner station lost another skirmish in the ongoing price war.  As I reported last time:

Since then, the prices have gone up and down twice.  First, the corner station started another round of price raising and failed, as they posted prices of $3.89 two weeks ago.  The other stations didn't bite, and by the end of the week, everyone was selling for $3.65.  This week, the corner station charged out into No Man's Land again and managed to hold it until today.   On Monday, they were selling regular for $3.79 while the three stations down the street had prices of $3.75.  That lasted until this afternoon, when the three stations dropped regular down to $3.70.  By this evening, the corner station matched their price.  I can take comfort in competition working to keep prices down.

The next week, all the stations dropped their prices to $3.68.  Wednesday of last week, the corner station again charged out of their trench to do battle in No Man's Land, raising their price for regular to $3.89.  The stations down the block again held steady, so when I filled up, I did so at one of them.  By Friday, the corner station retreated back into their trench, lowering their price to $3.68.  I can again take comfort in competition working to keep my costs down.